


Summons

by thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghost Luke Skywalker, Force Ghost(s), Identity Issues, Incest, Korriban (Star Wars), M/M, Manipulation, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Ritual Sex, Sith Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 10:54:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19271824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Kylo Ren attempts to summon the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. This is more complicated then he believed it to be.





	Summons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fairleigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/gifts).



Summoning the ghost of Anakin Skywalker has demanded more than he expected. 

He's never expected it to be easy - if summoning the spirits of the dead was meant to be _easy_ then he's pretty sure the old Sith wouldn't have needed a whole book on the subject, but there definitely is a book because he has it. It gives precise information on the words to say and the posture to hold, timings, dress, everything that could conceivably exert an influence when trying to entice a ghost out of the Force and onto the physical plane. It said some would come relatively easily and others would be harder to control, but all summonings would take a toll on th summoner. It said some would come with the very first ritual and some would take many, many more. Kylo knows Darth VAder was strong in the Force, so he's been prepared for difficulty. At least he tells himself he has because he knows he hoped for something different. 

Of course, what he hoped for and reality aren't even close to each other. If reality is where he is now, what he hoped for is at the far side of the galaxy, floating about uselessly in the shattered remains of Alderaan. He wanted Vader to come because _he_ called, not because _someone_ called. He wanted it to be momentous and grand, like it means something. It doesn't. It's not. 

Summoning the ghost of Anakin Skywalker has demanded more than he ever expected, but at the same time it's demanded nothing at all. He's been there all along. The man he took for the temple caretaker is definitely not a caretaker. The man he's been fucking for a week now is the ghost he came to find, and nothing is what he thought it was. 

When Anakin steps into the room tonight, Kylo is already waiting on his knees. 

"Hello, grandfather," he says, with a grimacing smile. And Anakin doesn't deny it. 

\---

Once Snoke was gone, the first four of five times he tried to summon Vader were in his quarters on his flagship or in his quarters on Starkiller Base. He'd timed it each time so that Hux would be tied up somewhere else, so he couldn't interfere, then he set things up and started. Not a single thing happened, except that he wore himself out. It was a disappointment to say the least. 

"Maybe you should find somewhere...not here," Luke said, after the sixth attempt. He gestured around Kylo's quarters, somehow managing to make that seem disparaging despite the sparse Jedi way he'd lived himself. 

"Because obviously I can trust you and you want me to succeed," Kylo replied. He didn't roll his eyes but his tone probably implied it. Then he stood but he'd underestimated the effort he'd put into his failed ritual; he lost his balance and Luke was there in the blink of an eye to steady him. His hands still didn't quite feel real on Kylo's bare upper arms and he still wasn't sure how he felt about that. 

"I don't _not_ want you to succeed," Luke said. "I'm dead, what do I care?"

But Kylo wasn't sure that followed because being dead might have meant he'd changed in fundamental ways but he hadn't changed _that_ much. He glowed blue around the edges and if Kylo concentrated hard enough he could put his hand straight through his chest, but that was only the physical change. In terms of his personality, he was still the same Luke Skywalker he'd ever been: serious and acerbic with flashes of dark humor Kylo had sometimes been the only one to understand. His mom, or General Organa, or whatever he was telling himself to call her since he'd left Luke's new Jedi Order, had told him once that he'd been different when they'd met; she'd said she thought the Force had changed him at least as much as the war had, and he said she'd never really changed at all. 

But, of course, they'd both left out one vital piece of information: Darth Vader was their father. His grandfather. Their blood. 

He made his unsteady way to the bed and lay down, eyes closed. Sometimes he was almost sure he could still see Luke's blue glow through his eyelids - that was how he'd first realised he was really there and he hadn't just imagined it. So, he rested one arm over his eyes to block it out, like he could pretend he wasn't there. That has never, ever worked. 

"What do you suggest?" he asked, when the room had stopped spinning around him. He couldn't see Luke's blue glow anymore but he didn't need to see it to know he was still there - Luke was always there, and he had been since a few days after Crait. 

"Well, the Jedi built their first temple on Ahch-To," Luke replied. 

"You're saying I should go to Ahch-To?"

"You're not exactly a Jedi these days, are you." 

Kylo moved his arm away and squinted at Luke through the momentary blur that made him seem almost like he was real and not glowing like a desk lamp.

"Then what _are_ you saying?"

Luke sat down on the edge of the bed and the mattress dipped with the insubstantial weight of him. He'd been learning that in the months that had passed since he'd first arrived, how to appear more human and less like an apparition from the other side. Everyone with even the slightest hint of Force-sensitivity could see him and Kylo was giving contemplation to sending out an Order-wide memo that they should all ignore the sarcastic ghost that was following him around. So far, he'd been repeating himself like a broken holocron every time someone talked to Luke, or stared at Luke, or held a door open for him like he couldn't just walk straight through it. 

"The first Jedi temple is on Ahch-To," Luke said, in an infuriatingly teacherly tone. "Where's the first Sith temple?"

"Are you telling me to go to Korriban?"

Luke smiled wanly. "I'm not your master anymore. I don't _tell_ you to do anything." He nudged at Kylo's side until he grudgingly started to move over. He lay there, stretched out on his back on top of the faintly itchy standard-issue First Order blanket he was unconvinced Snoke had ever used, still stripped to the waist after his miserably failed ritual, wondering exactly what he'd done to deserve this as Luke stretched out beside him. Not so very long ago, just a few years ago, that would have been almost everything he'd wanted in the galaxy; now, he was torn between wishing he would leave and hoping that he never did. 

"But you know..." Luke said, close enough that their shoulders touched, and the backs of their hands. Luke tangled his fingers with his and Kylo sullenly didn't shrug him off, telling himself it was because he was so damn tired. "I hear the Valley of the Dark Lords is great this time of year." 

Kylo didn't reply but that didn't matter. As he drifted off into an exhausted sleep, he was already plotting a course to Korriban. 

\--

When he was seventeen years old, Ben found a book. 

Aside from the fact it was a book, not a datachip or a holocron but a physical book full of physical pages, it seemed completely unremarkable. After all, they had books in the temple library that his uncle Luke had collected over the years, some that he'd bought from specialist dealers and some he'd found himself, and some from little market stalls on backwater worlds whose sellers didn't know what it was they'd got. Ben had been with him when he'd found one like that, back when he was still just twelve years old, and afterwards he'd asked Luke why he'd paid so much when the seller hadn't asked a tenth of that. Luke told him ten times what he'd asked was less than ten times what it was worth, and the seller would always remember; if another one like it came his way, the first thing he'd do was contact the temple and offer it to him. Ben didn't say he could have just used the mind trick, but that was what he was thinking. Honestly, Luke probably knew that. 

The book he found was unremarkable, or at least it was at first glance. It was just another old Jedi text from another ruined Jedi temple that his uncle liked to visit - Ben always liked to travel, at least so he could get away from the isolation of the temple, but he was less enthusiastic about seeing every other temple that the Jedi ever built. But there was something about it, its old hand-stitched pages with their hand-written text in their stiff leather binding, that made Ben take notice. There was something that made him take a second look. Probably something to do with how he'd found it. 

The temple they were visiting wasn't the oldest they'd been to but it was in one of the sorriest states of disrepair that Ben had had the misfortune to experience. It looked liked some of the archaeological ruins his mom had taken him to see when he was travelling with her for senate business, all tumbledown stone columns overgrown with moss and bushes and a tree broke through the floor by one corner. He'd made a game of skipping from one section of broken wall to another, hopping onto half-tumbled pillars and daring himself not to fall, like he was twelve again and not seventeen. But then suddenly he'd known that there was something there, underneath that overgrown section of broken-down wall. And while Luke was somewhere else, out of sight, he used the Force to nudge the wall aside. He pried up the flagstone underneath and there it was, dusty and cobwebbed and wrapped in a crumbling oilskin rag. 

He should have given it to Luke and he knew that. Luke was the one with the interest in old Jedi texts, probably because he'd learned most of what he knew from books and holocrons after his masters were already dead. But the book seemed to call to him and he wondered if Luke could hear it, too, or if he was the only one. He slipped it into his bag and when Luke returned, he didn't seem to notice anything, so he kept it. When they returned to the temple, he put it underneath his bed with the only other thing he'd ever hidden from Luke: a cracked kyber crystal he'd been told not to use. 

"It's hard to make a weapon with a crystal that's flawed," Luke had told him, so he'd chosen another one, one he wanted less, but he'd also kept the other one. As Jedi, they didn't really own a lot except their lightsabers, but Ben kept the crystal, and he kept the book. 

By the time Snoke was dead, Kylo had been planning the ritual for years. Or at least he'd been planning to plan it for years, ever since he'd taken the book out from its oilskin covering and recognized the verb _to summon_. Not a lot of the rest of it had made much sense to him - for the most part, the apprentices at his uncle's school had been taught according to their master's strengths and Uncle Luke had never been much of a linguistic scholar. Ben had understood his lack of interest because he felt that, too. He'd always liked to think they were a lot alike, if not in looks then in character. He'd like to say he knows better now. 

He'd found the book before he left, but after the scandal. he'd had so much respect for Luke before that, respect and something else he wasn't sure that he should even think about, before everyone in the galaxy found out about his grandfather at the same exact time as he did. He'd always known that his mother had been adopted but the way she'd talked about her birth parents had made it seem like she didn't know who they were - finding out her father was Darth Vader, and that she'd known for years, since before he was born, was a kind of betrayal that he'd never expected. Maybe from her, but not from Luke. 

Once, he'd have given the book to Luke without question. As it was, he took it back to the temple and tried to decipher it himself, but he couldn't find enough information on the dialect it used to piece the words together into sentences. He couldn't ask Luke, because he couldn't ask Luke for anything anymore. He didn't trust the other students. So he'd wrapped it up again and hid it again, underneath a flagstone underneath his bed, and left it there for another time. 

When he'd left the temple, he took the book with him. He'd expected that he'd have to learn to read the language himself but he didn't; he found someone who understood and asked them nicely to translate it for him. When they declined, he asked less nicely. He ignited his new red lightsaber with its cracked kyber crystal lodged inside and he leaned in close, one end of the quillon by the translator's eye. He could have used the Force, but he found the fear he saw much more satisfying. 

The man had translated the book, all of it, every word, then Kylo found a second source and had her verify the work. Stormtroopers had killed them both. He hadn't order that but he didn't stop it, either. 

He'd put the book and the new translated pages underneath the deckplate underneath his bed on the _Finalizer_. He never told Snoke. Snoke never found out. He'd kept one secret just for himself, the way he had from Luke, though he'd studied it in private. 

Then, he took the book to Korriban.

\---

The way Luke had described Ahch-To had made it sound desolate and empty, but when Kylo took his TIE down to the surface of Korriban he understood the difference between the planets. There were living things on Ahch-To, Luke had said - not just the Lanai but birds and fish and plants and insects. There was nothing alive on Korriban when he reached out with the Force and his transport's sensors said the air was breathable but when he stepped out onto the surface it tasted stale, like it had sat undisturbed for years. Maybe it had. 

There were several old, abandoned settlements on the surface but the temple was obvious, or at least it seemed to be. The problem was that after two full hours marching through the complex, finding only broken equipment and a lot of dust, he realized he wasn't in a temple at all - he'd been wandering around a Sith academy. It seemed hard to understand because from what he knew about the Sith, there were always two. At the academy, it was obvious there'd been hundreds. 

He searched for the temple for two days, which was longer than he'd hoped. Scans from orbit were basically no help to him whatsoever, so in the end he did what Luke had always told him to: he used the Force. He almost flew into a mountain using the Force, and he cursed out loud as he pulled up hard, but then he saw it; there was an entranceway carved into the old red rock, between two peaks of the mountain. There was no way to land the ship there. There was no way to get the ship close to there. The only way he was going to get to it was with a long, irritating climb. 

The climb took almost six hours from the nearest landing point, Kylo winding his way up the cliff edges and steps carved into the stone, pieces missing here and there and he could tell if that was damage due to its age and the movement of the rocks or if the spaces had been put there deliberately to pose a challenge. He had sweat in his eyes and trickling down his back underneath his clothes and the stale air started getting thinner. By the time he reached the entrance, he was starting to think he'd have preferred Ahch-To. Maybe Luke would have gone there with him, at least, and not told him point-blank that he would not set foot on the planet. Not that he wanted his company. He was fine on his own. He didn't need him. He'd never needed him. 

It was dark inside so he lit the way with his lightsaber. When he'd still been a Jedi his lightsaber was blue and more than once he'd missed it in situations like these - red just didn't seem to light the way like blue did, but he hadn't felt much like keeping it around like a kyber-powered flashlight. There were markings carved into the walls as he went deeper inside, in maybe the same old dialect the book was in, but the ten years since he'd found it really hadn't improved his Jedi-Sith philology. And the deeper he went into the mountain, the staler and more oppressive the air felt as he breathed it. He still couldn't feel a single living thing. Which was probably why he was so surprised to find someone there. 

There was a chamber in there, maybe an hour's walk from the entrance down twisting, turning, branching corridors carved straight into the mountain, where suddenly light flooded in from above and hurt his eyes till the adjusted. The room was open to the sky high above, circular at the base and bathed in light one past the ring of tall stone pillars, almost conical as it rose up, with mirrors dotted here and there around the walls to catch the light and drag it down. Judging from the fissures in the walls where the rocks had shifted, the mirrors had been hung and rehung over the years to make sure they still caught the light just right. And from the way the room was so neat and dustless and empty of debris, the stone floor still polished to a shine, it seemed like someone had been there. Recently. 

He saw movement; someone _was_ there, in the dark behind the pillars. His saber was still lit, so he extended it. 

"Who's there?" he asked. 

A man came forward, just far enough that he could make out the shape of him. He walked toward him, in the dark outside the ring of pillars. he was wearing robes, like Luke had always worn except darker, a dark enough brown that they were almost black in the shadows. But he wasn't carrying a weapon - he was carrying a broom. He was threatening the caretaker. He signed and turned out the blade. 

"Who did you come for?" the caretaker asked, as he leaned on the end of the broom. 

"What?"

"I mean: which Dark Lord of the Sith are you here to summon?" he said. "No one comes here for anything else. Is it Bane or Revan? It's usually Bane or Revan." 

"It's Vader," Kylo replied. 

The caretaker raised his brows. "Well, you're not the first one who's come for him. But he never listens."

"He'll listen to me." 

"That's what they all say." 

"I'm different." 

"They all say that, too." 

"They're not his grandson." 

"And you are?"

"Yes." 

The caretaker smiled faintly. "Then I hope you're not disappointed," he said. 

Kylo had no intention of leaving that place disappointed. He was going to speak to his grandfather. 

Little did he know, he'd already found him. 

\---

The caretaker offered him food and water and a place to rest till he started his ritual. Kylo was somewhat suspicious but he didn't sense any malicious intent and, as it happened, the door to the room he led him to only locked from the inside. He thanked him tersely for the food - a plate of fruit and nuts he didn't think were poisonous, at least - then ate and lay down to rest behind his locked door. The pallet on the floor was neatly made, like it had been waiting for him. Given what the caretaker had said about other visitors, he supposed it was kept ready just in case. 

It was the middle of the night when he left the room again, with his lightsaber in one hand like a lamp and the book held tightly in the other. The mirrored chamber was so full of moonlight that he didn't need the saber so he stopped there and set it aside with his boots and his cloak and his shirt. He sat down cross-legged on the ground in the center of the polished stone circle, barefoot and bare-chested, and set the book down in front of him. As he was about to begin, the caretaker appeared again. 

"I should stay in case you pass out," he said. 

"Does that happen a lot?"

"Yes. And the rock's porous. It takes a lot of scrubbing to get the blood out." 

Kylo nodded tightly. "Just stay still and be quiet," he said, then he began. 

It did feel different on Korriban, he had to give Luke that. He'd been able to call on the Force in the ship and on the base but it was a different kind of power he felt there and the words he spoke seemed to draw that power to him, into him, filling him up until his head swam and his fingers tingled. He felt like it might finally work, like he'd finally made a connection, but when he said Vader's name and the power he'd gathered in him rushed out, he didn't appear. More than that, the power he'd gathered and let loose took an equal share of Kylo with it. He didn't pass out, but it was a narrow thing. He didn't care. All he cared about was that he'd failed again. 

He slept on the pallet behind the locked door for almost a full day, then he ate and he drank and he tried again. He sat there in the moonlight at the center of the wide stone circle and he said the words that the book said he should and he could feel the power in him, filling him up, hot and dark and swirling. The planet was a mausoleum - he'd flown over the valley where the Dark Lords had their tombs - but that didn't mean the Force was absent. It was in the rocks and the barren soil and the Dark Lords' mummified remains. They were all still there, all of them, Bane and Revan and Malak, Kaan, Exar Kun, Plagueis, Naga Sadow, all the names that Snoke had told him as they'd trained. Palpatine was there, and Vader, and hundreds more, dead and gone, buried or unburied, but never really gone. Korriban was a graveyard and a tangled web of spirits spun between the stones. Kylo was going to find the thread that led him to his grandfather, and pull. 

But it didn't happen the second time, either. Vader didn't come. And as Kylo's nose bled over his chin and down his chest, he didn't even have the strength to launch the fucking book across the room. He wished he'd never found it, because he knew that he could never give up. 

The day he'd found out about his grandfather, he'd been angry about it, and maybe that wasn't the Jedi way but everyone at the temple seemed to understand that, even Uncle Luke. It made sense that he'd be upset to find out he was related to Darth Vader, and not even indirectly. Through his mother, he was Vader's direct descendant. Leia had no other children and Luke had no children at all; Ben was a Jedi and that required that he lack attachments, and under Luke had meant celibacy; so, Ben Solo was Vader's _last_ descendant. The others probably thought that was good, and they probably thought that he did, too. They probably thought a lot of things that weren't exactly right. 

They thought he was angry because Vader was his grandfather, but that wasn't it. He was only angry that no one had ever told him because once he'd known, so many things had made sense. It wasn't his uncle's footsteps he'd been meant to follow in. Being a Jedi had been so difficult sometimes because _he wasn't meant to be one_.

Snoke had given him his grandfather's charred helmet and told him _Vader would have been proud_ , almost like he'd known him. Luke had never spoken a word about him, except to say he'd promised Ben's mother that he wouldn't. 

When he'd left the temple, he'd taken the book with him. He'd never seen his grandfather's ghost, but he'd promised himself he would, and the book was the key. He was absolutely sure of that. Of course, he's been absolutely sure of many things over the years, like his own power and his uncle Luke. He'd been sure his uncle Luke would never let him down; he had. He'd been sure his uncle Luke would never leave him; he'd done that, too. 

"I'm not going with you," Luke had told him, sitting there on the bed in his quarters on board the ship while Kylo was preparing. He'd taken a star destroyer to Korriban and that might have seemed like overkill except he'd thought it suited the grandeur of the occasion. Rather limited grandeur, as it turned out. 

Kylo paused then carried on what he was doing, packing his things into a bag. "Do you want me to ask why?" he'd asked. "Are you hoping I'll beg you to change your mind? I'm not going to." 

"You know, there's a reason half the First Order hates you."

"They're jealous." 

"You're unpleasant." 

"Nobody's forcing you to be here." 

He'd heard Luke move. He'd been getting better at that, making sound when he moved, though Kylo has always been able to tell where he is in a room because the way Luke feels in the Force now is the same as he always felt, just stronger. Luke had settled his hands at Kylo's hips. He'd stepped up close against his back and wrapped his arms around his waist and Kylo could have stepped away - when he concentrates, Luke can't touch him. But, grudgingly, he'd let him hold on. 

"I can feel the dark side down there from here," Luke said. 

"So you're scared." 

"You're not?"

He was. And excited. And he'd felt a kind of gnawing dread that he still felt, sitting in that chamber inside the first Sith temple. He remembered how he'd turned in Luke's arms and Luke had kissed him the way he did sometimes, slow but definite with his hands at Kylo's jaw. Kylo remembered almost pushing him away, except he hadn't. He remembered wishing he'd leave and wishing he wouldn't. Since he'd found out about Vader, everything had been complicated; since Luke had died, it had been more so. Apparently vows of celibacy had only meant something while living and fucking his nephew was fine after death. Not that celibacy had been the only thing stopping them. 

He sat there bleeding till he thought he had the strength to move again, then he went back to his room. It took longer than expected, given how slowly he had to move. 

When he lay down on the bed behind the locked door, he told himself he did not wish Luke was there. His presence wouldn't have been comforting at all. 

\---

On the third night, as he went to the room to make his third try, Kylo knew he didn't have it in him. He also knew that if he didn't make progress soon, Hux would return from his wild goose chase to Arkanis, angrier than before and probably desperate to dethrone him. He couldn't afford to wait much longer. Of course, he'd wait as long as it took, but it was still time he didn't have. 

He said the words. He didn't need the book to remember them but he had it there on the floor anyway, open to the right page, with the translation sitting next to it just in case. He said the words and felt the power gather in him; he knew what would happen when he let it go, but he did it anyway. His nose bled. He passed out on the floor. And when he woke sometime later tucked in under the blanket on his borrowed pallet without a trace of blood on him. There was a tray of fruit and a cup of water waiting on the table. His book and the translation pages were stacked neatly beside the tray. 

He ate as he read, sitting there with his back to the red stone wall and his lightsaber handy, though he couldn't bring himself to believe the caretaker meant him any harm. He read the translation even though he already knew it almost word for word, unsurprising given how many times he'd read it since acquiring it. He needed a way to top up his strength, and waiting and resting wasn't an option. The book gave two further options. The first: he could steal another person's energy at the moment of their death; the caretaker likely knew that and would be prepared, and he didn't have the time to waste sending for troops to have them climb the mountain, and whatever he said about their deaths would probably be spun into political ammunition by Hux once he heard. He wouldn't know he'd killed them, but he'd make it sound like he knew he had. 

The other thing was sex. Kylo sighed and rubbed his eyes and set the pages aside. Of all the times for dear old Uncle Luke to disappear, it had really had to be this one. 

"I need your help," he told the caretaker when he arrived with yet more fruit and nuts, and a bowl of water and a cloth for him to use to wash the dried blood away. He set them down on the small table by the bed and looked at him in the muted lamplight. 

"Really," he said. 

"Really," Kylo confirmed. 

They looked at each other. The caretaker raised his brows. Kylo pursed his lips. 

"I need to have sex with you." 

"Running low on strength?"

"No, I just like to sleep with everyone I meet in ancient Sith temples." 

The caretaker chuckled and Kylo couldn't help but think his laughter was at his expense. He could have choked the life out of him with the Force or called his lightsaber to his hand and slashed him in half before he could react, but he had no guarantee he could redirect his dying energy that way - it wasn't like he'd ever tried, and he was still weak from the ritual anyway. Fortunately, the caretaker was already untying the belt from over his tunic by the time Kylo had come to that conclusion, so apparently chuckling didn't mean no. 

He had just about enough strength left to undress himself - he was already missing his boots and shirt from the previous night's ritual, and he'd seen them folded and neatly piled across the room but hadn't been able to find the will to either use the Force or go fetch them himself. He raised his hips awkwardly and pushed his pants and underwear down over his knees then kicked them off with an absence of grace he regretted but that was sort of the point of why he was doing this - he had no strength left for grace. Then he watched the caretaker taking his own clothes off. 

He wasn't unattractive, as it turned out, not that he'd paid too much attention to him before. He wasn't quite Kylo's height and he was narrower and slimmer but once his tunic and undershirt were on the floor, Kylo could see the lean muscles through his arms and chest and abdomen that didn't strike him as being too much like a caretaker's. He took off his boots and his pants and Kylo watched that, too. Underneath he had slim hips and a flat stomach and a thick cock he wrapped his hand around and stroked. Kylo watched _that_ , too. 

"Come here," he said, annoyed that he'd had to say it at all. His cheeks felt hot and he told himself that was anger but he knew it was more like arousal and frustration; he was frustrated that he needed help and frustrated that this was the only plan he had and frustrated that he'd had to ask a stranger instead of Uncle Luke. On the other hand, he wasn't sure if asking Luke would have felt better or worse. That would have depended quite a bit on how Luke reacted at the time. 

"How do you want me?" the caretaker asked. He came forward toward the bed with his hand still wrapped around his cock and Kylo couldn't look away. "On my back? On my knees?"

Kylo grimaced. "You'll have to do me," he said, almost angry about it, and he pushed himself up and over onto his forearms and knees. He shuffled his thighs apart awkwardly. Much as he hated the idea, he wasn't sure he had the stamina for anything else. He also wasn't sure he wanted to be able to see him while he did it, either. 

He felt the slight shift of the thin bedroll over the wooden pallet as the caretaker moved to kneel behind him. He felt his hands skim his hips and his ass and his thighs and his calves and he tensed as he told him, "Get on with it," through nearly gritted teeth. 

The caretaker didn't reply, or at least not in any way that wasn't purely physical. He let his fingertips skim the crack of Kylo's ass, just lightly enough that it made him shiver completely against his will. Then he moved in close and rested his erection against the small of Kylo's back. He ran it down between his cheeks, the tip faintly slick but nowhere near enough. For a worrying second he thought he might just do it like that, but then he leaned away and pulled a pot of something shiny and thick from the pocket of his discarded tunic. 

"You knew I was going to ask for this," Kylo said, seething, but mostly at himself as he gripped the blanket. 

"It seemed fairly obvious," the caretaker replied. Kylo heard him remove the lid from the pot and then his fingers rubbed between his cheeks, against the muscle that was still clenched tight. "The other option was you'd try to kill me." 

"What if I'd done that? Did you think of that?"

He rubbed at the rim of Kylo's hole and made his stomach pull tense. "That wouldn't have ended well." 

"For you."

"Perhaps."

" _Get on with it_."

"If you say so." 

He heard him slick his cock. He felt him move. And his own cock was traitorously hard, too, hanging down stiff and heavy and distracting as the caretaker went up on one knee and guided his cockhead against his hole. Kylo told himself he didn't want it, it was just necessary to the process, that for all he knew the man whose slicked erection was pressing bluntly at the tight muscle between his cheeks had done exactly this with the last hundred people who'd come to summon spirits, and maybe he'd killed them afterwards. But he took a breath, and he relaxed, and he felt him push inside him. It wasn't so much different than Luke, he thought. Except sometimes, if he concentrated, he could let Luke's cock push in insubstantially then turn solid after and fill him from the inside. This wasn't quite the same as feeling Luke. 

The caretaker gripped his hips and started to move and Kylo took an unsteady breath against his borrowed pillow. The caretaker shifted harder, pushing into him with a hard slap of skin on skin, and Kylo stifled a moan against his borrowed pillow. He tried imagining Luke but it was completely futile - he didn't feel like Luke or sound like Luke or act like Luke in any way. Luke had him slowly and made it last till he was almost begging, as much as he hated that. Luke kissed his collarbones and his throat, his jaw, pressed his mouth to his like Kylo wanted all those years when he was still alive and sometimes when he had his legs around Luke's waist and his cock inside him he might have thought it was all in his head except that if someone with the tiniest connection to the Force had walked in, they'd have seen him, too. Sometimes, he almost wanted them to.

The caretaker was nothing like Luke, but that didn't really matter. He fucked him hard, jarring, stretching him tight around his cock, and Kylo got one hand down around his own to jerk himself weakly. But he could feel the Force gathering around him, and in him, warm and dark and dizzying, as he mumbled the words that the book told him to say. He could feel his strength returning, and the Force pumping through him like his blood, _in_ his blood, clawing at him inside the beginnings of his orgasm. It came quickly. _He_ came quickly, pulling tight around the caretaker's cock inside him as he emptied himself in graceless spasms across the blanket. 

"Get out," he barked into the pillow, then he pushed up on his hands and said, " _Get out_ ," again, testily and breathlessly. So the caretaker pulled back, and pulled out, but Kylo could hear the sound of his hand on his cock and the groan as he came against the blanket, almost right in the same spot Kylo had, maybe just to spite him. Then he stood, and Kylo sat back on his heels. He raked his hair back. His heart was beating wildly and he was still covered in his own dried blood from his last failed ritual but he felt _fantastic_. 

"I'll fetch you a fresh blanket," the caretaker said, then he scooped up his clothes and left, still naked. Kylo would like to pretend he didn't watch him go, but he did. And when he saw him again in the moonlit room where he set up for the ritual, he tried not to look at him. He knew what he looked like underneath his clothes, and he wanted to see that again. He wanted to _feel_ that. He was the second person Kylo had ever slept with, thanks to Luke's rules and then Luke's posthumous change of heart, and the simple fact was he wanted them both. 

He gave so much of himself to the ritual that night that he passed out again. And in the morning, when he woke, when the caretaker undressed without him even asking, he almost didn't mind that he'd failed again. 

Almost. 

\---

He failed again the next day and the day after, and woke up each time tucked into bed. At some point, dimly, in the back of his mind, he realized he hadn't locked the door in days. 

He failed the next time, too, and he'd really thought he stood a chance that time, maybe more than any other. The first few days he'd spent exploring the temple, wandering the corridors with his saber in his hand, counting lefts and rights so he wouldn't get lost. It was like a labyrinth, except spread out over at least eight levels, and chances were there were others he just hadn't found his way into. Everything was dust and ash and bones, broken lamps and a library full of fading, crumbling books that fell apart in his hands when he tried to open them. There was a row of dusty holocrons that he swept into his bag to look at later, but they were the only things left that time hadn't taken. Except for the things in his borrowed room, and presumably the caretaker's. He assumed he must go offworld for supplies. 

He'd spent the first few days exploring, but that day he didn't leave his room. Once the caretaker joined him, he didn't leave either. They didn't speak much, but he had him three times; as Kylo rode him that third time, hard and fast, his muscles screamed and he almost couldn't say the words but he felt the Force in him like he never had before. He thought the ritual would work. It didn't. He woke up alone in bed again. If he'd had the strength, he would have torn the fucking temple down around his ears. As it was, all he could do was launch his plate across the room; it was made of metal, so all it did was clatter to the floor instead of break. 

He read the book again while he was waiting for the caretaker, wondering if there was something he'd missed, but he really knew before he started that there wasn't. He ran his fingertips over the handwritten words like that would make them mean something to him somehow, regretting that he'd never learned the language but then again he knew that had never been particularly likely. He wasn't that kind of student. He'd mostly resented being a student at all, both under Luke and under Snoke. 

"Can you read this?" he asked, when the caretaker arrived. He gestured at the book he'd got lying open on his lap. 

"Yes." 

"Tell me what it says." 

"It says exactly what you think it says." 

"So the translation is accurate?"

"Yes. It's an accurate translation." 

"So I'm doing what I'm meant to." 

"Yes."

"So it's just not working?"

"Yes."

"I have to stop soon or I risk losing everything." 

"That sounds unfortunate." 

"It would be." 

"I did say he wouldn't listen." 

"And I said he would." Kylo nodded tensely; it felt like everything he'd done since he'd arrived was tense. He closed the book with a snap. "He will."

Kylo was already naked and it took the caretaker less than a minute to join him on the bed, between his thighs. Kylo closed his eyes as he fucked him, his hands tight on his thighs, Kylo's tight on the blanket, and they moved together quickly. When he came, his body felt better, but the dark side flowing in him only greatened his frustration. He hadn't expected it to be easy, no, but he hadn't expected it to be this hard. 

That night, in the circle, he sat cross-legged on the floor and he said the words just like he had so many times before. He said the words and somehow he knew it had been easier thinking maybe it was a mistranslated word that meant his timings weren't correct, or he mispronounced a vital phrase, or something, _anything_ , that was something he could fix, something quantifiable. But he knew it wasn't that, or at least the caretaker had said so, and it sounded like he'd seen others try. It was something else. His grandfather was still resisting his summons and he was giving almost everything he had, short of his life. Maybe he just wasn't strong enough. Maybe Snoke had been wrong, and he wasn't proud. 

He said the words just like always, no change in inflection, or gesture, or time. And then, at the end, as he felt the Force gather, he said, "Luke Skywalker." 

As the room spun around him, he saw the blue light appear. As he passed out, Luke caught him. He didn't fall. 

"You're an idiot," Luke said, when Kylo woke. "I told you I didn't want to come here." 

Kylo groaned and closed his eyes again and said, "I thought the Force was everywhere. Aren't you technically always here?"

"That's not how it works." 

"I don't care how it works." 

"You're the one who called me here." 

"You can go. I just wanted to know that it works."

"So you're having no luck." 

"Not unless you call _this_ luck." 

"I don't." 

"Well, neither do I." 

Mercifully, Kylo thought, they fell silent, but as usual even with his eyes closed he could tell Luke was there. He'd seemed out of place on all those First Order ships and installations at the time but Luke in a Sith temple seemed like an extra step forward into the deeply fucking weird, or like maybe Kylo had taken it a step too far. He could have said any other name, Jedi or Sith or anywhere in between, and maybe he could have summoned them instead. Maybe Revan or Bane would have come if he'd called, or maybe Master Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Sometimes he'd wondered what his namesake would have thought of him, and he could have found out except he'd said Luke's name instead. He guessed he knew why, even if he had no intention of admitting it. As much as he resented what Luke thought of him, he did at least already know what that was. 

He opened his eyes when the door opened and the caretaker came in with food. He looked at the caretaker looking at Luke. He looked at Luke looking at the caretaker. There was a moment when an unspoken something passed between them and Kylo might have wondered what it was but he was weak and ravenous and he guessed it was just about the fact he'd said Luke's name instead of Vader's, or else because he'd brought a Jedi to Korriban, albeit a dead one. 

"Should I stay or go?" the caretaker asked. 

"You stay," Luke said. "I'll go." 

"You're the one he summoned." 

"Don't split hairs." 

"Why don't you both go?" Kylo snapped. They both looked at him for a moment, frowning the same frown, and then they both left. Luke closed the door behind them and they left him there alone. He'd asked for that, yes, but he hadn't really wanted it. The lack of sex made him weak as if he'd been drugged. All he needed was for Hux to walk in with a blaster and his day would have been complete. 

That evening, though, he slowly made his way to the room again, just like the nights before, and he took off his boots and he stripped off his shirt. He sat down, on his knees this time, not cross-legged. He unbuckled his belt. 

"Fuck me," he told the caretaker, and he shoved his pants down to his knees. "Watch," he told Luke, and he saw him frown across the room. But, in the end, they both did as they were told. 

When the caretaker shoved down his own pants and pushed inside him, Kylo, on his hands and knees, had Luke come closer. Luke loosed his cock and Kylo sucked him, Luke's ghostly fingers in his hair and the caretaker's cock thrusting tip to hilt inside his ass. Luke tasted of nothing. Luke smelled of nothing. All he could smell was his own fresh sweat standing out on his skin and the balm that was slicking his hole, the stale old air and when he touched himself, when he jerked himself roughly, when he came all over the polished stone floor, the bitter scent of his own come. 

The caretaker came inside him; Kylo didn't tell him not to, so he did. Luke came in his mouth; Kylo wanted him to, so he didn't stop sucking. They'd never done that when he was still alive so he had no idea what he'd tasted like - every part of him was made up of the Force and his come faded back into it just seconds later. The caretaker pulled back. So did Luke. Kylo pulled up his pants, wiped his mouth, then sat down with his legs crossed. He hadn't said the words and he was still weak, but he did it anyway. 

Still breathless, his hole still smeared with lubricant, his come still on the floor in front of him, he said the words. He felt the Force. He said, "Darth Vader." 

Nothing happened. Vader didn't appear. But as he lost consciousness, Luke began to laugh. 

\---

Kylo was always vaguely aware that his Uncle Luke was an almost mythical figure, larger than life and known throughout the galaxy. He heard the stories and he wanted to be like him. He remembers how excited he was when his mom told him he was going to be a student at Uncle Luke's new Jedi temple. 

The reality of Luke wasn't nearly so grand as he'd imagined, but Kylo knows nothing ever could be. He wasn't ten feet tall, he didn't leap tall buildings in a single bound and he didn't even seem particularly adventurous, despite what all the stories said - they spent most of their time in the temple, or in the temple grounds, studying. Most of the times they left were to go visit other Jedi temples, old ones where there weren't any Jedi living because they were the only ones left. 

He'd always wanted to be just like his uncle, so he worked as hard as he could. He was the best of all the students with a lightsaber. He could move objects with the Force more easily than anyone else. The physical stuff came easily; it was things requiring patience that came hard. 

Luke wasn't what he'd imagined but he idolized him anyway. In the start, when he was younger, all he wanted was to make him proud, and he _was_ proud. Then, when he was older and there were more students at the temple, he had to fight for Luke's attention. It didn't feel fair, not when he was Luke's nephew, and his best student, and he told himself he wasn't angry when it wasn't his turn to take a trip offworld, or when Luke didn't have time for him. Jedi weren't angry. Jedi let their feelings go into the Force. Except he didn't. He couldn't. He was never good at that part. 

He was fifteen years old when he finally understood. Another student was training with Luke, sparring with wooden practice swords instead of lightsabers, and all Ben wanted was to be that student fighting Luke. He could imagine himself there, with the sword in his hand, in the temple courtyard. He could imagine himself not making all the simple mistakes the other student made, because he was better than that. He imagined the weight of the sword in his hand, different to a lightsaber with weight right down the shaft instead of only in the hilt. He imagined the strain, and the look on Luke's face, and he imagined beating him, unlikely as he knew that was then. He could almost see the surprise. He could almost feel his heart racing. He could almost feel Luke's roughspun tunic underneath his hands as he dropped the sword and pulled at him. 

He imagined kissing him, because Luke wouldn't be able to ignore that. And later, in his hut, he told himself it was all because he was fifteen years old - there were whole books on that in the temple library, after all. It was always a confusing time, even if you were a Jedi, and fantasizing about his master, his _uncle_ , didn't really mean a thing. It was normal, even. _He_ was normal. He'd grow out of it. Except he never did. He never has. 

Luke knew, of course. Luke would catch him watching before he could look away. Luke avoided touching him, not that he'd done it very much before, but there were moments when he'd reach out to squeeze his shoulder but stop himself from following through. Luke avoided taking trips with him, as far as he could without it seeming strange, so suddenly all trips with him were in groups of three or four. Luke looked away when he spoke to him and as the months passed, as the _years_ passed, Ben could feel himself growing resentful. It wasn't enough for Luke to be proud now, or for him to tell him he was doing well. He needed more than that, and he knew there was no way he'd get it. 

The news about his grandfather didn't help the way he'd thought it might. It made him angrier, it made him sick with how Luke had kept it from him, but it didn't dampen his attraction; if anything, it made it worse. He understood why Luke had the power he did, and he wanted that himself. He understood why what was dark in him was so desperate for the dark in him. He wanted to hit him. He wanted to shove him up against the nearest wall and suck his neck until it bruised and tell him they were blood so they belonged together. He'd never wanted anyone the way he wanted Luke. And Luke knew. And he did _nothing_.

Ben was twenty-two years old when he pulled himself out of the lake one morning and onto the wooden jetty. He hadn't known that Luke was there. He wasn't sure if that would have changed things, but he still likes to think it wouldn't have. 

His hair was soaked hanging down in dripping strands around his face. His body was soaked and dripping on the jetty's wooden boards. Ordinarily, Ben might have reached for the towel or his tunic or something, anything, to cover up, but he didn't do that, at least not immediately; he looked at Luke as he stood there, dripping, naked, barefoot on the deck, he looked at Luke as he looked at him, and tried to work out his next move from the expression on Luke's face. When he picked up the towel, he used it to rub his hair first. He maybe even seemed nonchalant.

Luke looked at him. The problem wasn't that Ben was naked - they all lived more or less on top of each other at the temple so nudity had happened before and would in all likelihood happen again. The problem was Luke's reaction to it, which was something Ben had never seen on him before. Luke was looking at him. Luke was _looking at him_ , like he'd just realized his nephew was a man and not a boy, like he'd just realized it was a man and not a boy who was still attracted to him after all those years. 

Ben had always expected some kind of humiliating talk about how Luke was flattered and how he understood, about how crushes were normal and he'd grow out of it one day, but the talk had never come; that was when he understood why. He could feel it in the Force, not like a Jedi at all. As Luke winced and turned away, not soon enough, Ben couldn't help but laugh because his stoic Jedi uncle wanted him, too. 

"No," Luke said, that night, when Ben cornered him by his bedroom door. 

"Why not?"

"You know why." 

Ben nodded. He knew. He walked away. He guessed he hadn't expected anything else. 

"No," Luke said, months later, when Ben came in from a solo mission that hadn't quite gone according to plan. Luke had been worried; Ben's mind had made a leap. 

"Why not?" he asked, frustrated, because he could see the way Luke was looking at him. 

"You know why," Luke said. And he did. He did. But Luke didn't even reprimand him when he used the Force to tear his desk in half; he let him get away with it. 

"No," Luke said, a year later, reboarding the ship after a fight. It was their two lightsabers against eight men with blasters. They'd won, easily, but Ben's adrenaline was still riding high. 

"Why not?" he asked. 

"You know why," Luke replied. 

He did, he absolutely did, he knew all the reasons why. But he made him say the one he meant, more than any other reason. He made him say, "Because you're my nephew." Not because he didn't want it. Not because of any vows they'd made. _Because he was his nephew_. Had he been anyone else, he'd have broken his vow in an instant. Of course, had he been anyone else, he wouldn't have wanted him. Maybe that's why Luke wanted him dead. 

When Luke appeared not long after Snoke was dead, at first Kylo wasn't sure that he was really there. He felt him in the Force, but at first he couldn't see him. Then he saw the glow, and he knew he was real. He'd hoped he was wrong and hope that he wasn't. He'd wanted to kill him, but he hadn't wanted him dead. 

When Luke took shape, Kylo pushed him up against the nearest bulkhead. Luke let him. he didn't say no, but slowly Kylo's hands sank straight through him. That was as good as rejection, he thought. 

But by the time a month had passed, Luke could remain solid if he wanted to. When Ben pushed him up against the wall, when he sucked his neck till a real neck would have bruised, when he twisted his hands into his tunic so tight a real one would have torn, Luke didn't say no. Luke kissed him. Kylo wished he could have done that ten years earlier. 

He's been telling himself it's too little too late, but the sad truth is he'll still take what he can get. 

\---

In the morning, Luke was there. 

"Don't you ever sleep?" Kylo said, and he covered up his eyes. 

"I'm dead," Luke pointed out. "From a certain point of view, I'm always sleeping." 

"Not mine." 

"I used to talk in my sleep sometimes. Maybe that's what I'm doing now." 

"It's not." 

"How would you know?"

Kylo opened his eyes. He looked straight at him, sharply. "I wouldn't, would I," he said, pointedly. "We never shared a bed until after you died." 

Luke sighed and walked away. He must have been annoyed because he didn't bother with the door; he just walked straight through it. 

Later, the caretaker came in with food and drink. 

"Do you want me to stay or go?" he asked. 

"Go," Kylo replied, petulantly, so he put down what he was carrying and left. He spilled the water all over the floor and Kylo cursed as the door swung closed. He was being petty. He found it hard to care. 

He failed again that night, after he'd stripped naked and ridden Luke right in the middle of the floor, bruising his knees on the stone again. After Luke had come in him, he dragged the caretaker down into a kiss; he'd never kissed anyone in the galaxy but Luke, but he didn't really care, not as he twisted the fingers of one hand into his hair and stroked his cock with the other. Luke, who was no longer alive and so followed none of the laws of physics, stayed hard inside him, holding his hips tight as he watched them both. Kylo hoped he was jealous, but he probably wasn't. And then, when they were done, when his lips were almost sore and his thighs were aching, he said the words and failed. 

"You know, the Jedi have a ritual for this as well," Luke said, when Kylo woke. He was sitting on the floor by the bed almost like he was meditating, glowing brightly enough that Kylo didn't need to turn on the lamp against the perpetual dark. 

"I'm not a Jedi," Kylo replied. 

"But you're not Sith, either. Maybe you should think about that."

He thought about it. He thought about it the whole day. He'd been a Jedi, or he'd tried to be, but none of it had really seemed to fit. And Luke was right: when he'd been with Snoke, under Snoke's influence, they'd never actually called him _Sith_. Almost all of what he knew about the Sith came from his uncle and the books he'd read after he'd found out about his grandfather. What Snoke had taught him wasn't Sith-specific. He'd never given it much thought but not knowing what he was felt disconcerting. 

He failed again that night and in the morning he asked Luke, "So, what's the Jedi way?"

Luke smiled wryly. "We just ask," he said. "It usually works." 

"You _ask_?"

"We ask politely." 

"You asked grandfather?"

"Yes." 

"And he came?"

"Yes." 

"So why won't he speak to me?"

Luke shrugged. He rubbed his beard. "That's not for me to say," he said, and Kylo sighed. His grandfather wouldn't speak to him at all, and his uncle's non-answers were the next best thing to silence. 

He failed again that night, not unexpectedly. And when he woke in the morning, he pulled Luke down on top of him. He ran his hands through Luke's hair and down Luke's back and pulled him closer. When he took two handfuls of the back of his tunic, it almost felt completely real. When he kissed his mouth, when he bit Luke's lip and made him curse, he could almost believe it really hurt him. It wouldn't be long until he couldn't tell the difference. 

"Is this worth it?" the caretaker asked later that morning, when he came in with breakfast and Luke made himself scarce. 

"Yes," Kylo replied, then he grimaced and said, "I hope so." 

"What are you hoping for specifically?"

"That he'll speak to me." 

"What do you hope he'll say?"

"That he's proud of me." 

The caretaker sat down on the end of the bed and put the plate of food down on the table. "You know, he had a change of heart before the end," he said, with his hands in his lap. "He regretted what he'd done." 

"Then he was weak." 

"That was when he was strongest." 

"I don't believe you." 

"You should." 

"Why should I? You're just a caretaker." 

He smiled. He rose. "Is that what you think I am?" he said, with an amused quirk of his brows, and he left the room. Kylo threw the plate after him, gnawing hunger be damned. 

When he asked Luke if that was true, he said yes. When he asked Luke why he'd never told him, he said, "I made a promise to your mother." When he asked why he was saying this now, he didn't have an answer. Of course, he'd never had an answer for why it was suddenly fine to fuck him, either. 

That night, he didn't bother with the ritual; he just went to bed and slept instead. Luke had never lied to him - he'd only ever omitted the truth, which was just as bad sometimes but maybe not right now. As far as he could see, the caretaker had no reason to lie. Exhausted as he was, failure as he was, he had to wonder if the reason his grandfather was silent was that he was ashamed of him. Maybe all he'd done was make the same mistakes that Anakin Skywalker had made before. 

Then, in the morning, he found the two of them sitting together in the ritual room, lit up by sunlight from the mirrors. Luke was almost translucent with it. The caretaker glowed blue, just around the edges. He'd never seen him in the light before, and now he knew why. 

Finally, he understood. In that moment, he knew exactly who he was. 

\---

Summoning the ghost of Anakin Skywalker his demanded more than he expected. It's needed blood and sweat and sex and bruises and bitter realizations he's not ready for. And then again, it's needed none of those things at all. He was here right from the start. 

"Hello, grandfather," Kylo says, and Anakin - the caretaker - doesn't deny it. 

"Hello, Ben," he says, and Kylo winces at the name he's not sure can ever be his again except Anakin took his back. 

"Were you always here?" Kylo asks. 

"You wanted something grand. We gave it to you." 

"So this was all a joke at my expense?"

"I'm not laughing."

"I bet Luke is."

"Well, Luke has a strange sense of humor." Kylo guesses he can't argue with that. 

Kylo's on his knees on the floor, like he's been for so many nights now. He's naked in the stale air he's been the only one breathing. His grandfather has had so much more time to get it right - in the temple's low light, he really believed he was real. 

Anakin kneels in front of him, still in his dark tunic. He was still a Jedi when he looked like this, Kylo thinks, only about his age. This is how he wants him to know him, before Vader and the helmet and his induction to the Sith. The ritual never worked because Darth Vader was already there with him. Luke brought him here for this. They all know it's the only way he would have listened. 

"I didn't kill my master till the end," Anakin says. He brings his hands up and cups Kylo's jaw. "You're ahead of me. I'm proud of that."

"But not the rest?"

"Not the rest. But there's still time. You still have time." 

Kylo doesn't know what time he thinks there is, but he doesn't ask. He kisses him instead, eyes closed and desperate, pulling him in tight, expecting to be pushed away again except he's not. Then Luke is there, too; even with his eyes closed, he knows, the way he always has. 

Anakin kisses him, his fingers sliding back into his hair. He feels Luke's forehead touch against his bare back between his shoulderblades, hair seeping his skin, and he wraps his arms around his waist. When Anakin pulls back and Kylo opens his eyes, he can see the three of them in one of the lowest mirrors; Luke was older when he died than his father ever lived to be and Anakin looks almost younger than Kylo is now. It's a mess, it's a disaster, and he knows he shouldn't want it, but he can't bring himself to believe it's wrong. At least no more so than it's ever been with Luke. 

They'll leave in the morning. He'll go back to the fleet and make sure Hux can't stage a coup - of the two of them, Hux has always been dangerous on a far more grand and sweeping scale. He'd burn half the galaxy to ashes to ensure that the First Order wins. 

They'll leave in the morning and recycled shipboard air will have never tasted quite so sweet as after Korriban. He'll put Hux in his place and go back to his quarters and ask himself what he's going to do next because he has no idea what the solution is, or if the situation even needs one. Now Snoke's not in his head, it's harder than before and so before he jumps in one direction or the other, he needs to think things through - he's neither Jedi nor Sith, so maybe he can choose another path. And for a moment he considers sinking back down onto the floor and saying the familiar words, doing it just one last time and saying _Sidious_ instead of _Vader_ , because having a master would be easier than this. But he doesn't. 

They go back to his room, the one that Anakin prepared for exactly this purpose, and Kylo lies down as he watches them strip off each other's clothes. They're so familiar with each other, the wry twist to Luke's mouth as Anakin pulls off his tunic, that he almost feels a pang of jealousy, but somehow he knows that there's no need for that. They're his family. Maybe they judge him but they will always be with him. He doesn't doubt that Anakin is coming with them, wherever he chooses to go.

They'll leave in the morning, and he'll leave the fucking book behind. He doesn't need it anymore.


End file.
